Isolde Standish is an Australian and British academic

film theorist Film theory is a set of scholarly approaches within the academic discipline of film or cinema studies that began in the 1920s by questioning the formal essential attributes of motion pictures; and that now provides conceptual frameworks for unde ...

who specialises on East Asia (mainly Japan and South Korea). Mostly known for her works on

Japanese Cinema The , also known domestically as , has a history that spans more than 100 years. Japan has one of the oldest and largest film industries in the world; as of 2022, it was the fourth largest by number of feature films produced, producing 634 fi ...

, she is currently an ''Emerita Reader'' (Professor Emeritus) at the

School of Oriental and African Studies The School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS University of London; ) is a public research university in London, England, and a member institution of the federal University of London. Founded in 1916, SOAS is located in the Bloomsbury area ...

(SOAS) in London, England and teaches Post-War Cinema and the

Avant-Garde In the arts and literature, the term ''avant-garde'' ( meaning or ) identifies an experimental genre or work of art, and the artist who created it, which usually is aesthetically innovative, whilst initially being ideologically unacceptable ...

at the

Tokyo University of Foreign Studies , often referred to as TUFS, is a specialist National university, national research university in Fuchū, Tokyo, Fuchū, Tokyo, Japan. TUFS is primarily devoted to foreign language, international relations, international affairs and area studies. ...

. Standish mostly works in Japan, South Korea and the United Kingdom. She has been awarded numerous prizes and grants, including the Ouseley Memorial Scholarship, a

Japan Foundation The is a Japanese foundation that spreads Japanese culture around the world. Based in Tokyo, it was established in 1972 by an Act of the National Diet as a special legal entity to undertake international dissemination of Japanese culture. I ...

scholarship, an AHRC Research Leave Award and a

Leverhulme Trust The Leverhulme Trust () is a large national grant-making organisation in the United Kingdom. It was established in 1925 under the will of the 1st Viscount Leverhulme (1851–1925), with the instruction that its resources should be used to cover ...

Major Research Fellowship in 2014.

Early life and education

Standish obtained a Bachelor of Arts in Humanities and Social Sciences in 1983 from the Ballarat College of Advanced Education (now

Federation University Australia Federation University Australia (FedUni) is a public university based in Victoria, Australia. It is the modern descendant of the School of Mines Ballarat, established in 1870 as the fourth tertiary institution in Australia, which evolved to f ...

), a public dual-sector university based in

Ballarat Ballarat ( ) () is a city in the Central Highlands of Victoria, Australia. At the 2021 census, Ballarat had a population of 111,973, making it the third-largest urban inland city in Australia and the third-largest city in Victoria. Within mo ...

(Victoria, Australia) and a PhD from the

, a constituent college of the

University of London The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in Post-nominal letters, post-nominals) is a collegiate university, federal Public university, public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The ...

Career

Standish has held teaching positions in Japan. She also worked as an emerita Reader in 'Film and Media Studies' with the Japan and Korea Section of the East Asian Languages and Culture Department and a member of the Centre for Creative Industries, Media and Screen Studies at the

, in London. She worked within the ''Centre of Korean Studies'' and the ''Japan Research Centre'' (JRC). At SOAS, she has been the lead convenor for the master's degree in Global Cinemas and the Transcultural and supervised a number of PhD students. In 2018, Standish accepted the Ishibashi Foundation Visiting Professorship in Japanese Art History at

Heidelberg University Heidelberg University, officially the Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg (; ), is a public research university in Heidelberg, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. Founded in 1386 on instruction of Pope Urban VI, Heidelberg is Germany's oldest unive ...

Selected bibliography

Authored books

*Standish, Isolde (2011), ''Politics, Porn and Protest: Japanese Avant-Garde Cinema in the 1960s and 1970s''. New York: Continuum International Publishing Group. *Standish, Isolde (2005), ''A New History of Japanese Cinema: A Century of Narrative Film''. New York: Continuum. *Standish, Isolde (2000), ''Myth and Masculinity in the Japanese Cinema: Towards a Political Reading of the Tragic Hero''. London: Curzon.

Articles

* Standish, Isolde (2015), 'The Revolutionary Triptych'. Kiju Yoshida: Love and Anarchism, pp 29–43. * Standish, Isolde (2012), 'The Ephemeral as Transcultural Aesthetic: a Contextualization of the Early Films of Ozu Yasujiro'. Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema, (4) 1, pp 3–14. * Standish, Isolde (2011), 'The jidaigeki television series: myth, iteration and the domestication of the samurai hero'. Japan Forum, (23) 3, pp 431–440. * Standish, Isolde (2010), 'Night and Fog in Japan: Fifty Years On'. Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema, (1) 2, pp 143–155. * Standish, Isolde (2006), 'Film and Narrative in the Yakuza Genre'. Cinemaya, (1) 2, pp 20–23. * Standish, Isolde (2005) 'Chushingura and the Japanese Studio System'. Japan Forum, (17) 1, pp 69–86. * Standish, Isolde (2005), 'Mediators of Modernity: 'Photo-Interpreters' in Japanese Silent Cinema'. Oral Tradition, (20) 1, pp 93–110. * Standish, Isolde (1993), 'Korean Cinema and the New Realism: Text and Context'. East-West Film Journal, (7) 2, pp 54–80.

Edited books or journals

* Standish, Isolde, (ed.), (2014), ''Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema''. Volume 6, Number 1, May 2014. Oxford: Routledge.

Book chapters

* Standish, Isolde (2007) 'Transgression and the Politics of Porn. Oshima Nagisa's In the Realm of the Senses (1976)'. In: Phillips, A. and Stringer, J., (eds.), ''Japanese Cinema: Texts and Contexts''. Abingdon: Routledge, pp 217–228. * Standish, Isolde (1998) 'Akira: Postmodernism and Resistance'. In: Martinez, D.P., (ed.), '' The Worlds of Japanese Popular Culture: Gender, Shifting Boundaries, and Global Cultures''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp 56–74.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Standish, Isolde Film theorists Living people Philosophers of culture Year of birth missing (living people) British Japanologists British mass media scholars British women academics British women philosophers Critical theorists Koreanists Australian Japanologists 21st-century British philosophers 21st-century Australian philosophers Academics of SOAS University of London